In this article, the conditions and determinants of the introduction and development of the circular economy (CE) in Poland were presented against the background of the widely discussed essence of circular economy, with particular emphasis on the Polish mining sector. In addition, the European Green Deal—an action plan for a sustainable economy for the entire European Union, was discussed. Particular attention was paid to the role of human resources in the area of supporting research and stimulating innovation, and in the area of activating education and training. These issues are further discussed in the next chapter by presenting the forms, ways and scope of education for sustainable development in the international context. Another chapter describes the EIT Raw Materials KAVA 5 RIS competition in Poland (in Kraków) at AGH-UST from 2019 to 2022, an international project in a consortium of four universities whose main objective is to strengthen entrepreneurship in the V4 countries in line with the recommendations of the “Green action plan for SMEs” in a way to meet the requirements of circular economy. The initiatives and trainings carried out within the framework of this project were discussed, and the results of the student survey on the level of knowledge achieved regarding entrepreneurship in the area of the raw materials industry were analysed. The validity and necessity of continuous education in eco-responsible citizenship has thus been confirmed.

This article analyses opportunities and threats for the Polish power industry resulting from the EU climate and energy policy. The main assumptions of the policy and directives resulting from it with regard to climate protection and the use of renewable energy sources (RES) in the production of electricity and heat are presented. The negative effects (threats) for Poland in meeting the EU requirements are discussed. The paper also discusses the opportunities for Polish coal, proposing solutions to meet EU directives and to maintain energy security without having to give up Polish coal. Reference is made as well to the plans to liquidate the Polish mining industry, indicating solutions opposing such actions.

In the practice of mining companies, the vast majority of them produce more than one product. The analysis of the break-even, which is referred to as CVP (Cost-Volume-Profit) analysis (Wilkinson, 2005; Czopek, 2003) in their case is significantly constricted, given the necessity to include multi-assortment structure in the analysis, which may have more than 20 types of assortments (depending on the grain size) in their offer, as in the case of open-pit mines. The article presents methods of evaluation of break-even (volume and value) for both a single-assortment production and a multi-assortment production. The complexity of problem of break-even evaluation for multi-assortment production has resulted in formation of many methods, and, simultaneously, various approaches to its analysis, especially differences in accounting fixed costs, which may be either totally accounted for among particular assortments, relating to the whole company or partially accounted for among particular assortments and partially relating to the company, as a whole. The evaluation of the chosen methods of break-even analysis, given the availability of data, was based on two examples of mining companies: an open-pit mine of rock materials and an underground hard coal mine. The selection of methods was set by the available data provided by the companies. The data for the analysis comes from internal documentation of the mines – financial statements, breakdowns and cost calculations.

The subject of the article is a new method that I have developed for calculating a multi-asset break-even for multi-assortment production, extended by a percentage threshold and a current sales ratio (which was missing in previously published methods). The percentage threshold provides unambiguous information about the economic health of a company. As a result, it became possible to use it in practice to evaluate the activities of economic entities (mines) and to perform modelling and optimisation of production plans based on different variants of customer demand scenarios. The publication addresses the complexity of the problem of determining the break-even in multi-assortment production. Moreover, it discusses the practical limitations of previous methods and demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed method on the example of hard coal mines.

The paper presents a new concept of determination of the break-even point (BEP) for multi-assortment production enterprises. Against the background of the discussed methods for the analysis and assessment used so far in relation to the mining sector, the complexity of the problem of determination of the BEP in the event of multi-assortment production is brought to a closer focus. The paper also presents two author’s own methods for the calculation and for the practical application for the needs of management of a mine and of a group of mines (company, enterprise, holding) in present market conditions.

Due to the withdrawal of coal from power generation in the EU, mining companies in Poland are forced to adapt their production to the decreasing demand. Forecasting the volume of demand plays an important role in planning the volume of the mine’s output. The demand for coal is constantly changing, with a downward trend. This article presents a method that allows to assess the impact of the variable demand on mine profits and on the volumes of sales of individual coal grades. The proposed method is based on the Monte Carlo simulation and on a solution consisting of the optimization of the production and sales of coal by the mining company (the SIMPLEX algorithm). By using the Monte Carlo simulation to forecast the demand, unlike other commonly used methods, a sufficiently large set of real situations that may occur in the future can be obtained. The results allow us to conclude the extent of desirable adjustment of the structure of the mine’s production to the requirements of its consumers, as well as to predict in which direction these changes will proceed and with what probability. The usefulness of the developed method has been verified on the example of an existing hard coal mine.